drunk as David's sow

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drunk as David's sow

Where it comes from

Francis Grose, in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), claims derivation from an instance in which a man named David Lloyd, who was accustomed to showing his six-legged sow as a curiosity, found his intoxicated wife where he expected the sow to be. Grose's dictionary was meant as a work of humour, and this story is almost certainly fanciful. Variants of the phrase predate it by over a century (see e.g. R. Monsey's Scarronides (1665) "As drunk as any Davids Sows" (p. 20)).

adjective

not comparable Thoroughly drunk.
Similar: drunk as a cunt, drunk as a fiddler, drunk as a fiddler's bitch, drunk as a lord, drunk as a piper, drunk as a skunk, drunk as a sow, drunk as a wheelbarrow, drunk as an owl, drunk as Chloe, full as a goog, pissed as a fart

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MLA

"drunk as David's sow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/drunk%20as%20david's%20sow. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

APA

drunk as David's sow. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 7, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/drunk%20as%20david's%20sow

Chicago

"drunk as David's sow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 7, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/drunk%20as%20david's%20sow.

BibTeX

@misc{drunk_as_david_s_sow_2026,
  title = {drunk as David's sow},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/drunk%20as%20david's%20sow},
  urldate = {2026-11-07}
}